Whether the result of human error or an inevitable, uncontrollable act of nature, the calamities in World's Worst Historical Disasters are riveting and sobering. The book looks across time and borders to explore devastating plagues, earthquakes, volcanoes, genocides, floods, and crashes. Learn about the massacre at Milan, the great fire of London, the Samastipur train disaster in 1981, and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, to name a few. Complete with illustrations and outlines that present facts at a glance, each fascinating account analyzes what led up to the disaster, the disaster itself, the extent of the damage, and the dreadful aftermath.

The disasters include:
-Sodom and Gomorrah
-The tsunami that devastated the coastline of Crete in 1650 BC
-The onset of the "Little Ice Age" in 1200 that resulted in starvation and epidemics across the Northern Hemisphere
-The Black Death, or plague, that killed 75 million people in Europe
-The transatlantic slave trade, which cost over 10 million African lives
-Smallpox decimated the North American Indians of New England (1622)
-The Irish potato famine
-Mont Pel e in Martinique erupts, killing the entire population of the nearby town of St Pierre (1902)
-The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire kills nearly 150 workers in New York City (1911)
-The sinking of the Titanic (1912)
-Japanese soldiers commited a month-long massacre of the citizens of Nanking, China (1937)
-The Union Carbide factory leaked poisonous gas in Bhopal, India, killing thousands in 1984
-The Space Shuttle Columbia broke up over Texas 16 minutes before landing (2003)
-An earthquake in Bam, Iran, resulted in a death toll of 40,000 (2003)
-Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans and the southeastern coast of the US
-Haiti earthquake, which killed 250,000 people in one of the world's poorest countries